Saturday, March 24, 2012

Just wanted to post a little update to let everyone know where we are in our journey. Our hearts have been turned inside out, upside down, and all around as we continue to learn new things every. single. day. This journey has been exciting and nerve racking and everything in between.

Since the last post God has shown us a vision and spoken direction and peace into each of our hearts. We are currently in the process of getting the paperwork together for our international adoption from Colombia.

We are working with an agency located in Texas and have been so thankful for their patience and attention to detail in our process so far. We are gathering documents, getting blood work, psych evals (this should be interesting!), and working on compiling papers for our Dossier. Once we send our first group of paperwork in we are ready to have our Home Study!! We are hoping to get that done during April. From there we will continue to work on our Dossier and anxiously await a referral from the Colombian government..... I love how God's patient spirit has completely overcome our home... and I pray I allow myself to keep accepting it. Don't get me wrong, I have TOTALLY had my share of crazy, frantic, hurry it up now moments. But I am completely confident that my God has our son already chosen for us, and until He is ready to reveal our son to us, we will patiently wait, work on our paperwork, and be on our knees in prayer for him. Will YOU join us?

A little bit about Colombia....

Colombia does not allow you to choose gender, although we both feel that God has a son out there for us, and we have been told now by several people that because we have two biological daughters, the Colombian government will most likely place a son with us! We have specified 0-35 months old, but more than likely our child with be at least 7 mos (in all reality probably older) because Colombia tries to keep younger children available for adoptions in their own country before they allow internationals to come in. Once we get matched with a child they will send us a picture, medical report, and perceived reason the child was placed in the orphanage. From the date of referral it will take approximately 5-8 weeks to prepare everything before we can travel to Colombia to meet him/her!

Once we arrive in the country, we will BOTH have to be there for the first 8 days to meet our child and "bond" with him/her. After those 8 days one of us can travel home if need be. We will be staying in an apartment that our agency sets up for us! After those 8 days of traveling back and forth to the orphanage and getting to know our sweet child, we will be able to take him/her back to apartment with us! So he/she will be able to stay with us 24/7 while we finalize the legal part of the adoption in Colombia!! We will have a driver, translator, and lawyer whenever we go anywhere. Our agency has estimated that from the time of beginning paperwork to placement with the child will be around 15 months.

As far as our time stay in Colombia to finalize the adoption... we are unsure. Our agency has estimated based on previous adoptions anywhere from 3-7 weeks. What we are going to do with Faith and Ava... we still don't know! What Aaron is going to do about taking time off from Jet (which everyone there has been AMAZING and so helpful to us in the process so far)... we still don't know!! We are simply faithfully trusting that God will take care of each and every detail. We will cross that bridge when we get to it.